As computer systems and networked computer systems proliferate, information access time becomes more critical. For many reasons, access time to information databases has a tendency to increase even with frequent equipment upgrades and technology advances. This tendency is apparent in mostly all database accesses which involve telecommunications links and is especially visible to the growing number of users of the Internet and worldwide web applications where extensive graphics are implemented.
In most cases, a user has no informed control over the telecommunications link chosen to access sites on the Internet or the "net". Most Internet applications provide a user a plurality of selections for accomplishing a "search" for specific information in which a user may be interested. In those cases, the access speed may depend upon the search engine program design and also upon the telecommunications link and the data path selected. Once a user selects a search engine and then later selects a data path, if the data is coming in at too slow of a rate, the only course of action available to the user would be to stop the transaction and begin again using another selected engine or data path.
In other applications, a link screen is provided for the user to select one or a plurality of "web sites" where each web site is a so-called "mirror site", i.e. one of several listed sites which contain copies of the same information which is sought by the user. Each site may be served by the same server or a different server in the same room or a different server in another city or even in another country. The access times to any of the servers would also depend on a number of factors including the number of users logged on to the access page or using the telecommunications link at any given time. Generally, a user is informed of the choices of multiple sites which have the data or the document desired by the user, but is only allowed to select one site at a time.
Moreover, the fastest link at a given access time for one user may be the slowest link several minutes later for another user who may be attempting to use the same link. In some cases, access to mirror sites in foreign countries will provide faster access and data transfer time than corresponding sites in the same neighborhood as a user. Thus, a user may have successfully used a link or site on one day with great success and satisfaction but, later in the day, a subsequent use of the same link or site will not provide satisfactory results. In that case the user's only recourse to speed-up the transaction is to stop the current transaction and retry the access using a different mirror site selection. Unfortunately, that solution is not satisfactory either since much transaction time is lost in re-logging and engine start-up routines in addition to the time lost in waiting for results to return from the first site selection.
Further, when a user terminates one channel because it is perceived to be too slow, and selects another channel to transfer a document or file from a remote site, the second channel selected may turn out to be even slower than the first channel thereby exacerbating the problem.
Accordingly, there is a need for an enhanced method and processing apparatus which is effective to conduct real-time testing of a plurality of data channels available for use to access a given file or document, and to determine the most efficient method for accessing and delivering such data files or documents to a user.